It’s midday on a Tuesday, I’m wearing a lot of pink today and I’m thinking about when I should dive in for my snack of mixed nuts and crazy dark chocolate. The weather has been too warm for fall, leaving my apple picking adventures from Sunday to be too sweaty, and involving too many bees. But I survived, richer in apples and one thing checked off the Autumn list. Here are some other things I am loving right now.

doing fall (& festive) things. This list includes apple picking, and having plans for a corn maze, and a renaissance festival

my in real life book club Of Books And Tea Book Club, which I will start writing about soon in my blog Of Books And

Time is a weird thing. Growing up in New England I’ve come to mostly measure time in seasons and school years. I take comfort in the changing seasons, there is a certain amount of predictability – even when the weather is all over the place. I can count on the changing of leaves and the pumpkin spice lattes. I can count on Bath and Body Works to have candles that smell like Christmas.

Looking back on everything I feel like Time is illusion. Is it moving in a linear fashion? Am I 5 and 13 and 22 as well as 32? Am I feeling these heartbreaks all over again and again because my heart it stuck in last September?

I always assumed that as an adult I would have Things “figured out”. (Didn’t we all?). I thought that time would make sense. That I would get used to the changing of seasons and they would just become a thing that happens. But no, every time the season changes for me two things happen: I lament time lost where I did not do Summer “enough”. I did not take advantage of the weather the “right” way. And also, I get excited and nostalgic. Especially for Fall as it is my favorite. For some reason it’s still littered in heartbreak. I bathe in nostalgia and try to pave my way through.

And yet here I am. Still working out the way time moves. Slowly, all at once…

Words are something that used to come easy to me. I could sit and write a poem in math class. I was always jotting down story ideas. I had lists of ideas for blog posts. I would journal all the time and seek out pen pals. Now I feel like the words are still there but they’re stuck in a glass cage, struggling for air. I’m not sure what to write about, and my ideas feel like they fall flat. Forget poetry, because words themselves ache in a way that makes them unable to be magical or lyrical. They were are. Words and words, a series of 26 letters put together with spaces and punctuation.

I’ve been aching for creativity. I feel like I am under water watching as my life goes by. I feel like the thoughts inside my head get cemented there and pushed away into the depths of memory, forgotten because they don’t matter.

It’s so easy to fall into the daily grind. I see it over and over. I do it far too often. Routine isn’t always nourishing, especially when it’s full of empty thoughts and actions, mindless phone games and constantly checking social media.

I want to be more deliberate with my time. I want to make the most of all these seconds we have to call our own, and I want to create something out of nothing. So for September I am challenging myself to write the words I need to say. I’m challenging myself to get out of my mindless bubble, to write reviews on the media I consume and to engage in different ways. The first way I am doing this is to write and (hopefully) post here every day in September.

I started a few books this month that I’m still reading. There are three I haven’t finished (you’ll see them next month!) and one I decided to put down. I was halfway through Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple and nothing had happened yet in the entire book, so I was too bored to go on.

In May I read five books. A classic. A Keto cookbook/”diet” book and a trilogy.

I somehow managed to not read this in high school. We picked it for my book club book and I read almost all of it in one night, without realizing I was almost finished with the novel. Half of the edition I had was essays. I especially loved the introduction by Neil Gaiman.

I’ve been following Leanne Vogel on YouTube and online for over a year. Her new book is very comprehensive, has lots of recipes and lots of different ways to do the Ketogenic Diet. What I love about Leanne’s philosophy is that everyone is different. While this can make trying out keto difficult, it also makes it easier. There’s less pressure and more love. She’s great at explaining the diet and how eating ketogenic works. She also explains different ways to modify this diet and make it a lifestyle for you.

I almost wish this trilogy had a different title. The first book is good, but as a title it’s not a good representation of the rest of the books. I listened on audio to the first two books, then read A Court of Wings and Ruin in two days – in the airport/ flying to Tulsa, and on the way back. I dove straight into fangirl mode somewhere in the middle of A Court of Mist and Fury. I’ve been trying to keep myself from immediately rereading. Something about the characters, something about finding a book boyfriend when I haven’t felt that way about characters in a while. Something about the magic and the characters, the words and the core friendship group (the “inner circle” as you will). I love it so much. I love it in ways I haven’t loved a series in a long time. There are more books coming in this world, but they’re companion novels. I can’t wait. (Until then, I will go for Sarah J Maas’ other series Throne of Glass).

I’ve been a fangirl before that was a word. I’ve been a fangirl for almost twenty years, long before the internet made fans accessible to each other, before there was a community to find online the way there is now. Before Tumblr and Instagram and Twitter. I say that and it makes me feel old.

I stood in long lines outside Filenes to get concert tickets when they went on sale. I wore a blue wig just to feel like I stood out in a crowd of thousands. I wrote letters that I never sent. I pasted posters from Bop magazine on my bedroom door. I scoffed at anyone who called me obsessed, dismissed people who refused to understand. At night I dreamed up scenarios where real people turned into characters in my mind.

I was a fangirl during the days of dial-up internet and AOL chats. I made e-mail newsletters in crazy fonts and colors before there were e-mail spam issues.

I wrote fanfiction for friends and strangers, emailed chapters of stories as I completed them. I met some of my best friends that way. We didn’t have website where we could upload images we created and make own our merchandise, and there weren’t fan sites that sold pretty things. No Etsy or Redbubble. We used Geocities to make fan pages with terrible flashy graphics instead.

The first form of “social media” and online expression that I immersed myself in was OpenDiary. After that there was Xanga, Myspace and Livejournal. All were online worlds where I could connect with people I didn’t know who loved the same things I loved. In these worlds I could open my heart up in an anonymous way, like writing in a journal that others would see. I could know that someone out there read what I read and felt that, too.

Being a fangirl in the early 2000’s meant you didn’t have a cell phone to text people, and you had to rely on long-distance phone calls to hear someones’ voice. We took pictures with regular cameras, selfies with digital cameras (before “selfie” was a word). Before digital cameras we had to wait for them to be developed and hope they came out okay. We recorded television appearances on VHS because we didn’t know if we could ever see those recordings, hear the silly stupid words said again.

Now there is a lot of community online. You can find community for any sort of thing you can fangirling over). You can immerse yourself and meet new people and relate. And I’m glad about this. I know lots of people scoff at everyone being too connected and addicted to their phones, but they discount the experiences of these people. They discount the connections made long distance with friends you’d never have met another way. I have a few very dear friends that I still talk to, and I met them because we connected over the Internet. We dreamed about Hanson. We wanted to write like Francesca Lia Block. When I was in high school I still felt disconnected. No one else had liked Francesca Lia Block, no one knew who she was. Everyone made fun of me for loving three blonde boys who, at one point, could have been mistaken for girls (who cares about their gender, anyway?). I’m glad we can get together and post in a group on Facebook, use hashtags and share fanart in ways that used to be more difficult.

A couple years ago I read the book Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell and it was the first time I read a book with a main character so much like me. I couldn’t believe it. All those years fangirling over books and music and falling in love with songs and boys – both fictional and real – and writing endless stories and finally I had found a character that I could relate to so much.

So being a fangirl has changed a lot over the years. In a way, I think it’s a lot cooler now, but maybe it just feels more cool to me. There’s more access to community, shops that make candles based on character and story scents, artists that sell fanart in the form of prints and clothing among other things, subscription boxes to fill your fandom needs and so much more.

Do that thing that makes you come alive. Find your passion and let it fuel you. Don’t lose sight of the world around you, the dreams you’ve always had. Don’t forget the friends who are soulmates, and the experiences that shape you. Let one weekend in a little city in Oklahoma change you. Let three brothers in a band make you.

Allow the thing you love to become you. Allow yourself to get lost in passion and forget who you might have been. Remember the teenager inside you, aching to come out. Learn everything you can about everything. Grow wings and fly.

Read the books that break you. Love the people even though it might hurt you. Be wild and free. Be alive and awake. Be aware. Create your bucket list and check off items. Add more things. Never finish that list. Sing the songs on repeat until they’ve memorized. Detail lives and experiences on your skin. Document your life in words and pictures.

Know what you believe in. Go after it. Jump far for it. Fight for your beliefs. Fight for yourself. Fight for everyone around you.
You’ve only got this one life. We aren’t immortal creatures. Live that one life.